brisbanetimes.com.au urban affairs reporter and blogger

Celebrating our commitment to love another: it is a gift that should be given to everyone. Photo: Stepan Popov

I almost still can’t believe I’ve come to this point. But I find it harder to accept that there will be people there, on Saturday, at my wedding, celebrating our friendship, my love, and my future, who currently cannot look forward to enjoying the same sense of profound joy that is burning in my heart as I type this special-day blog.

Yes, I will be blissfully happy as I walk down the aisle, looking ahead at this incredible person I am so surely committing to for as long as we both shall live. My body and soul will be singing with the beautiful music that has thrummed and soared and grown since we realised our love for each other. By nightfall, I reckon my cheeks will ache from too much smiling.

Yet there’ll be another hurt too. A hurt for my friends - my dearly beloved - who could not, should they want to, marry the love of their life. Those who are attracted to people who happen to share their sex. My gay and lesbian friends who, just like me, feel love, and want to be loved, and want to give love, but are prevented from expressing their love as I can, should they choose.

And choice is a key point. Marriage is a choice for opposite-sex attracted people. It should be a choice for all people. I am choosing to get married because it feels right and means a lot to me and my partner, but also because I want to, and because I can. I am not getting married because I believe everyone must marry in order to legitimise their relationship, or because matrimony is intrinsically better than de facto. Marriage is simply an option available to me, and I am exercising my right to it.

For I didn’t choose to be born with heterosexual preferences, just as my friends didn’t decide one day to be gay or bi or however they choose to define their sexual orientation. Sure, I believe we exist on a sexuality spectrum, and, yes, I do find women attractive, even sexually desirable.

In fact, I am sure I could very well build a long-term, loving, and emotionally intimate relationship with a woman. Indeed, I have some very close, very cherished friendships with women which may have raised eyebrows in another place or time. But not even the most beautiful, alluring, nymph-like goddess could so wholly satisfy me the way a man can. And not just any man - one man; this man I am committing to, absolutely.

The point here is: I did not choose my sexuality. Much like I did not choose to be born in Australia. But here I am, as I am, and I’m damn lucky that I’m able to enjoy the freedom to marry who I please, if I please. How is it right that others living in this self-styled lucky country are not so free?

We aren’t having a religious ceremony. We’re being married by a friend, who is also an authorised celebrant. So, under the Marriage Act 1961, we need to meet certain criteria to have our marriage properly solemnised. Some of that criteria relates to documentation, some of it relates to the ceremony itself. There are two specific parts, the first being saying to each other, before our celebrant and witnesses, the words:

“Before you are joined in marriage in my presence and in the presence of these witnesses, I am to remind you of the solemn and binding nature of the relationship into which you are now about to enter.

“Marriage, according to law in Australia, is the union of a man and a woman to the exclusion of all others, voluntarily entered into for life.”

(Or words to that effect).

Solemn? Yes. Binding? Yes. Union? Yes indeed, voluntarily entered into, for life. But marriage under Australian law - the same law that requires we vote, equally - being a legal station only a man and woman may enjoy together? I cannot accept that as right. I cannot accept that as fair. I cannot accept that as the Australian way.

From the moment I make my vows, and seal them with a kiss, I will always carry with me a splendid sense of serious, committed love and partnership. I will look back on this day with pride and passion and humility, cherishing the wonderful understanding that we two people shall give life to what I consider to be a majestic and sacrosanct notion.

But for as long as marriage, according to law in Australia, is considered to only be the union of a man and a woman, I will also harbour a will to change - to evolve - that definition.

Marriage should be a choice available to all of my friends. No matter where they sit on that glorious sexual spectrum.

Katherine Feeney is a journalist with the Nine Network Australia.Twitter: @katherinefeeney

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56 comments

Since you mention a sexual spectrum, do polygamous friends count?

Commenter

KV

Date and time

April 11, 2014, 11:28AM

hahaha - good question. No, they don't according to everything I've read from the gay marriage lobby.Interesting though - I can't work out why it's not unloving and judgmental to exclude polygamy. The same argument seems to apply to them as well.

Commenter

peter

Location

Sydney

Date and time

April 11, 2014, 1:20PM

The "gay marriage lobby" are (strangely enough) lobbying about their issue - same sex marriage. Let the polygamous marriage lobby - if there is such a thing - worry about polygamous marriage. Nice attempt at diversion from the issue though.

Commenter

H

Date and time

April 11, 2014, 3:32PM

Odd how it's generally men more in favour of polygamy - a structure which leaves the majority of them uneducated, untrained, kicked out of the only world they know, into a society where they live on the margins.

Or do the ones commenting imagine that they will be among the minority of sycophantic men who become the leaders of their group, having multiple wives available for their every whim?

Commenter

M

Location

everywhere

Date and time

April 11, 2014, 4:04PM

Katherine Feeney, you need to read the scientific literature around sexuality. omosexuality is not entirely genetic, or environmentally based. Some people ARE born gay. Others are not. So when journalists like yourself say 'my friends didn’t decide one day to be gay or bi or however they choose to define their sexual orientation' that is not entirely true. Some didn't. Some did. Facts matter, as do rights. I say let everyone marry who they want, but please, don't continue to peddle the 'everyone who is gay was born that way' myth.

Commenter

FD

Location

Singapore

Date and time

April 11, 2014, 11:48AM

"Omosexuality" ?

Is that referring to people whom have a washing detergent fetish?

Commenter

James

Location

Dystopia

Date and time

April 11, 2014, 2:01PM

"Omosexuality" ?

Is that referring to people whom have a washing detergent fetish?

Commenter

James

Location

Dystopia

Date and time

April 11, 2014, 2:01PM

I wish i was omosexual

Commenter

Z

Date and time

April 11, 2014, 2:40PM

Funny stuff guys, it was a typo - meant to read homosexuality.

Commenter

FD

Location

Singapore

Date and time

April 11, 2014, 9:55PM

Exactly, particularly for lesbians. It's not uncommon for women to 'jump the fence' in later life. There's actually no definitive proof that homosexuality is genetic anyway. I don't see how it matters. It all screams a bit too much of 'I can't help it'! Understandable that gays and lesbians might want to use that argument in the face of bigotry, but it really shouldn't matter if you were born that way or not. So lets not exclude the significant number of gays and lesbians who 'became that way'.